My name is "Classical"

 Yesterday we had a visit from our beloved friend Marion.  She is closer to him than anyone else (besides myself) in Bend.  For over a decade, up to the start of the Pandemic, she would come over to the house almost every Friday, first to be instructed in Poetry, and then just to meet and gossip about life.  The meetings started when Marion wanted to learn more about WH Auden and Will offered to teach her.  After they'd read through the Auden canon, they went on to other poets. So her experience of him is as a fellow cranky person and professor.

We had not seen her for awhile (I forget when last she came over).  We were comfortable being unmasked.  At one point it seemed like she wanted to have a linear conversation with him with turn taking based on the same shared subject.  That's not happening now and I sotto voceed a warning.

He is able to sound like he is having a conversation.  His brain latches on to anything it understands in the previous conversational turn -- a word or phrase -- and responds to that.  So what he isn't doing is carrying a picture of the entire conversation in his head.  I'll take notes next time.

He went back to bed after she left and then got up around 5:00.  I asked if he wanted some dinner and he said yes, though he ate very little.  Then, after wandering around a bit, he said, smiling, that it was cold and he was going to bed.  I was smiling back and asked him, "Well, do you know who I am today?"  

He looked at the hoodie I was wearing and said "You are the Classical . . ."

And I stopped him.  I recognized that his tired old brain still knows that language carries clues and that the answers are almost always in the written word.  So he looked at the language on the person in front of him:  "The Classical Theatre of Harlem."  His brain to vocalization process made that the closest thing that made sense to him in response to the question.